


Organic Idioms

by Arisusan



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Contemplation, M/M, a bit of an autopsy of his love life, megs is in jail and thinks about the last time that happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 13:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15486951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arisusan/pseuds/Arisusan
Summary: Alone in a jail cell, Megatron runs through the paces before falling asleep. Old mistakes, exes, dead relationships, embarrassing moments run together, because even mechanical warlords have brains that work against them. More specifically, he muses on the odd position that Impactor - coworker, best friend, mortal enemy, weakness - has in his life.





	Organic Idioms

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't been able to find a copy of the prose stories that go with the Wreckers saga, but while I was wandering around the wiki and some other trivia archives for timeline info, I found out that this is all canon: a) Megs and Impactor were best friends, with that left deliberately open to interpretation, b) at some point in time they hugged, c) during the war, Megs beat down and maimed Impactor, but froze up and failed to kill him when he reminded him of their shared past, and d) Impactor beat the hell out of Whirl to get (what is implied to be) vengeance for what happened to Megs. In conclusion: they loved each other and they remember it. This is kinda written in a pretentious style, since that's how Megs speaks. Contains a lot of probably non-canon speculation, but I wanted to build up the relationship structures that could exist that we don't really know about. Anyhow, I LOVE their mostly unexplored dynamic and I hate that Impactor died (or at least we think he died) before we got to see any more scenes between them

"It's lonely at the top."

The phrase was one the Autobots had borrowed from their human allies. Their nominal allies. At any rate, it rang true.

Megatron had seen a thousand sycophants, a hundred lieutenants, and a few would-be assassins. Some embodied all three. Many, like…like Tarn had offered unparalleled devotion to Megatron the warlord. Several offered something else. One could say that Megatron had chosen his solitary path at every turn when he refused all offers of comfort and compassion.

He could say that it was suicide not to. A mech deep in recharge in another's arms was one who would die there. He knew. He had ordered it, at times. Love was not a substitute for energon, and there were few who would not betray their partners when the fist came down.

That was not to say he'd never had companionship. Megatron the warlord was kindled in a jail cell and forged in the gladiator pits. Megatron the miner was older, and would outlive him.

Mine work was brutal, hot, and tight-packed. Like combiners, the miners huddled together, partly in self-defence and partly out of blind instinct. They knew that therein lay the only understanding, mech-to-mech, that they would ever find. Cheek by jowl they worked, drank, talked, fought, recharged, and all too often died. Megatron among them.

He had lingered on the outside for a time. Some miners were afraid of his questions he posed and the answers he postulated. He for his part could not understand their eagerness to drive each other back into the dirt each time one tried to pull himself out. Not at first.

Later, he would understand it all too well, and use it for himself.

It was a short century out of the birthing facility when he'd looked Mortilus in the optics for the first time, in a stuffy box formed by the jagged rock against his back, the dead miner beside him, the crush of parts and rock that had fallen in front of him, damaging his leg before he threw himself back against the tunnel wall, and the living mech—he had a name, though it was not important now to anyone else, and not to the story—who took up the rest of their shared crevice.

Several seconds passed before the dust cleared, settling on them and mixing with their leaking energon to form a thick, dripping substance.

The exact exchange had escaped him. What he remembered was his first taste of mortal terror, having known that a bad enough collapse would make their rescue difficult, and more than that, unprofitable. The mech next to him had laughed, and agreed with his evaluation of their chances. He'd asked him who he was, the last mech he'd ever see.

Megatron had found his vocalizer frozen, and his optics fixed on the debris in front of him. One of the parts ripped off and jammed between the fallen stone was a head, face locked in a scream. Only one optic showed, the glass around it shattered and blown away to reveal the intricate machinery of the part itself.

The other mech must have noticed, because a hand reached around his head and covered his optics, then pulled him close. Solid, and gentle, the touch sent a cool sensation through his fuel lines and calmed his systems.

"I wish I could tell you not to worry," he'd said, "But I can't. We're not exactly favourites."

The miner had sighed, and the slight rattle from the ex-vent passed through his frame and into Megatron's, echoing around his spark chamber. Then, he'd understood.

And spoken the first words of his that formed a  _line_ , and not just a sentence.

"When the light fails, none of us is; or else we all are."

A few small noises—the rumble of their engines, the creak of their joints and whirring of their fans, the echoing noise of slippage somewhere beyond their corner of the collapse—punctuated the silence, and gave it meaning.

"You sound like an intellect class," the miner had said at length, relaxing to let Megatron slip his arms around him as best he was able. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"I don't know," he'd answered truthfully. He could feel the dust gathering in his intakes. "Maybe it's Primus speaking through us."

"Maybe it's just you. Do they really put that legend stuff in your training?"

"Is it a legend?"

"I figure, if Primus was going to send someone to die in a mining accident, he'd be better off sending the supervisors."

They both laughed. The miner's one hand stayed firmly over his eyes, but the other wrapped its fingers around his arm, above the elbow joint.

"Should we go into power-save?"

"We're both undamaged," mused the miner, "'cept for scarring."

"If they decide to come down after us, we will be able to return to work. There's a chance they'll let us survive."

"My thoughts exactly. It's worth a try. And—what was your name?"

"Megatron. As in electron. Got it. Mine's Paramag. Same thing, eh?"

"Inner atom structure."

Paramag sighed, a noise he felt as much as heard, and let his head come down to rest against Megatron's.

"Thank you," he had said.

"For what?"

"Making my last moments a bit less awful."

"It's what you've done for me."

There and then, they shut down. In the tight space, the dead weight of their bodies only shifted them closer together.

…

Like any partnership in the mines, it started with little ceremony, and finished with less. The team recharged in a shared room, individual berths delineated with hazard tape on the floor. The pair of them traded a shift each to get Rotator to switch with Megatron, once it was clear that the data from the accident was taking a while to process, and that was that.

It helped to have low hum of Paramag's systems echoing through his frame. Paramag said he felt the same. What they were—not  _amica_ , and certainly not  _conjunx_ —wasn't out of the ordinary; two other pairs contact-recharged in their room, and stuck together on shifts when possible.

That ended when he was transferred to the night shift. Goodbyes were simple. A quick kiss, a few words—a few  _lines_  whispered into an audial, and a hug.

 _Amica_  and  _conjunx_  weren't the right words. They had a job and a berth in common, nothing more and nothing less. Maybe…a lover. Cybertronian biology didn't support the relationship scheme that most organics shared, but the word—meaning, essentially, a relationship built from physical sensations that works its way through to the spark…it could work. What was there was love, practical and temporary, but love still.

Paramag went. The patterns of his touch—a heavy arm along his side, a hand balled loosely just over his spark casing—lingered on for a while, then faded.

Tarmac was next. After him, Gangway. Megatron worked his way slowly through the ranks of miners, slipping from shift to shift as his strength and intellect pushed him forward and his rhetoric pulled him back.

The more he learned about the world, the more he came to be a part of it rather than another newspark spat out of the facilities, the more he burned. The little limericks and scraps of verse he'd murmured to Paramag turned into longer, freer compositions, not spoken any more but written on the datapad a few of his teammates had chipped in to get him. More research—looking through news archives, conversations with the older mechs, bits of fact gleaned from propaganda—all these allowed him to turn his mind from philosophy to politics. He wrote. He talked. He sharpened his questions and turned them on his teammates and bosses indiscriminately.

Eventually, after a cycle of promotion and demotion and promotion again, one that had seemed to last forever since it was all he'd known, the higher-ups at Nova Point figured out what they must have thought was a solution. A few of the more thoughtful or more dangerous ones from the mines in the area were grouped together, put on a shift with the biggest, most brutal supervisors. The idea, Megatron had theorized, was to turn them against each other—intellectuals against more active dissenters—and isolate them so their ideas wouldn't spread.

There, he'd met Impactor.

It started simply. He typed quickly and furtively into his datapad at a table in the dull, grey mess hall, and the mech had taken a peek as he passed by, skimming the few written lines.

Megatron hadn't even noticed him walk past, pause, and then return.

What he did remember was that he'd sat down—bright, brutal,  _brilliant_ —across from him, fixed him with a stare that matched the drill on his right arm, and asked to read more.

Quiet conversations in the mess turned to louder ones in the berthroom and even commed debates in the tunnels, where the sounds of work drowned out spoken words. Politics, yes, and everything else too. Impactor wasn't much of an editor, but as a sounding board he was perfect. And as a friend.

Other mechs had shared in his work before. His roommates, his—lovers, yes, that term could work, or berthmates—his teammates, and one unique supervisor.

Impactor wasn't satisfied with that. He wanted to share in the writing, the act of creation, and he wanted to stop with the poetry and start with the politics. How did the supposedly Functionist laws violate the tenets of that faith? How had the faith itself been twisted from its original meaning? Should there even be a link between belief and law, when there was no evidence to bridge the gap? No mech had the answer to any of those questions, not a certain one, but Impactor never let that stop him.  _Should_  was a statement for him where it was a question for Megatron. He was as blunt as his body was sharp.

It started after a fight. The supervisors asked questions, and Impactor answered them all with challenge and a blow. They beat him, of course. There was no other way it could end, and it hadn't been a real fight. Just a way to take the punishment, and—

"Why?" Megatron had asked quietly, dragging him off to one side and quickly running his fingers over his frame, feeling the dents in the metal and the places where joints had loosened and deformed. "What the hell do you think you're doing? That was a  _stupid_  move, and you know it."

"Do I look like I give a shit?"

"They're harder than you than on me." His fingers had found a place that creaked where there should be no moving parts, and pressed lightly. Impactor's face had creased in pain, making him pull away sharply as if it was he who'd been hurt. "Why didn't you let me speak? You know I could have talked my way out of it with a couple of extra shifts, not…not  _this_."

Impactor's hand had taken his, not gentle, but as gentle as he'd ever been.

"Beats me. You're newer 'n me. Better writer, too. Maybe I just didn't want them to shut you up. Probably I just wanted to hit someone."

Had they not been dripping purple in the middle of the mess, Megatron knew he would have kissed him. A young mech's dream.

The rest of the meal went in silence, though they did not leave each other's side.

Full of a naïve and protective worry, he had badgered Impactor over the next few weeks, watched his meals and his frame language, making sure he healed as quickly as he could. It wouldn't be the last fight Impactor would start—or join, or finish—over him.

That was the first night they recharged together. Their berths were already next to one another, and after running the few routine maintenance protocols miners could afford, Megatron had simply lain down next to him and pulled him closer, pressing a silent kiss to the top of his head. They slept curled together, Megatron's arms tucked beneath Impactor's chassis and Impactor's head leaning back against the front face of his shoulder.

Impactor was his last. Even after they were transferred and split up, they met up in the city with what free time they had. Megatron shared his writing. Impactor shared his thoughts. They drank and they talked and Impactor may—or may not—have moved on, but Megatron took nothing else to the berth but his datapad and a brain that recalled and recreated Impactor's rough weight.

Impactor was the last thing he remembered before he died. Starting a fight—over someone else, for once—and getting him arrested in the middle of it. Starting the chain of events that ended with him beaten out of his mind and locked up on Messatine.

They fought one another for four million years. No. They fought for four million years. Sometimes, they worked towards the same goal, directly or indirectly. It was rarely direct. Impactor had, like himself, long ago abandoned whatever ideals he may have had in the name of winning. He was a machine. The leader of the Wreckers, the Autobots' dirty little secret. In Megatron's long hours of fastidious research, he had found no real reason why Impactor had joined that Autobots. For all intents and purposes, they had simply let him out of jail and pointed him at the Decepticons, then let go and let his anger do the rest. He was a thing.

And Megatron was a god. Good or evil, mechs on both sides lived in fear, awe, and hatred of him.

His research had been broad. It told him that after his arrest, Impactor sent Whirl to the emergency ward with a fractured casing. In another life, a better one, they would stand side-by-side and hand in hand, chatting animatedly in the street like any other pair of  _conjunx_. In this one, Megatron stared through the screen and through millions of years into that jail cell, and saw the blind anger on Impactor's face turn to sorrow as he realized that this was the end of what they had.

They had fought one another once during that war. There was no contest. Megatron had beat him down and ripped off his parts with the ease of someone who knew the mechanism by memory. Impactor had fought, and snarled, and spat, but was helpless in the end, beneath his fusion cannon.

Why he had chosen then to speak—why, when he knew Impactor and his mechs would take the least opportunity to escape and crawl back to their master—that was a question he asked himself more than once, as if hoping the answer would change.

It was because he wondered if Impactor felt the same pain. If he remembered the soft touches and words between them, Megatron's fingers drifting over his lips to caress, not to maim; if he remembered how he spat energon and hauled himself up in beating after beating to defend him, and tried to help him survive in the world.

Likely not. Impactor could compartmentalize as well as he.

But while he'd spoken, stretching on the words and building his phrases oh-so-carefully, Impactor gave him something to grasp on to.

_No more poetry_

Words he'd heard a hundred times, groaned with a mouth he'd just torn out.

He had known, he must have known, that if Impactor spoke—if he begged him, insulted him, called his name—he would be dead. If he reached up and held him like he used to, brushing his thumb along his cheek and then his mouth, he would freeze, and there would be a harpoon buried in his spark. Maiming him had been a matter of survival.

Bit by bit, labouriously, working as Megatron relished the last touch they would ever share, Impactor had carved those words into the metal of the platform and  _reached him_.

Impactor escaped, not because of any plan or ruse or act of cruel mercy on his part, but because—

Words failed him for a moment. To admit it to himself was humiliating.

He was alive because he had loved him, and because he still did, and because some small,  _stupid_  part of him still believed that they could be together once this all was over.

Settling down in his cell, Megatron offlined his optics, and let his engine shift to a lower gear.

Impactor was a piece in his enemy's hands, to be manipulated when necessary and later destroyed.

He was also the last one he had loved without reserve and without malice. The one—the  _only_ one who might have been his  _conjunx_.

This, he did not forget, not after four million years.

Nor the feeling of his frame, nor the rumble of his damaged engine as they sank into a peaceful recharge.

These, he remembered.

Megatron fell asleep with a ghost in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> The line that Megs says to Paramag is from Margaret Atwood's poem 'A Sad Child', because not in a million years could I ever write good poetry.


End file.
